It is common that people, especially physically active and frail elderly people, experience a variety of limb injuries.
With regard to the foot and ankle, sprains to the calcaneofibular and anterior tabofibular ligaments often afflict a number of professional and amateur athletes. To aid in the proper healing and treatment of these and other lower leg and foot injuries it is necessary that the affected areas, as well as the surrounding tissue, be stabilized and immobilized.
Physicians traditionally have treated, and still currently treat, injuries affecting lower leg extremities and the foot by fitting the injured patient with the well-known, molded plaster or resin cast, which is set around inner cotton or gauze lining. The placement of this type of cast around the lower leg is time consuming, heavy, and costly. Further, this type of cast must not come into contact with water, which makes patient bathing difficult and time consuming. Additionally, if the cast needs to be removed for any reason, for example inspection or physical therapy, a whole new cast must be prepared and applied.
Alternatively, lower leg walkers provide stabilization and support of the lower leg, including the ankle and foot, such that at least partial mobility may be maintained while an injury to the lower leg, ankle, and/or foot is in the process of healing. Further, in contrast to the molded plaster or resin cast, a lower leg walker can be removed by the patient in order to bathe or for inspection of the injured limb by a physician or practitioner.
Existing wrap-around or circumferential walkers can be bulky and difficult and time consuming to don and doff. In particular, numerous straps must be properly threaded through retaining rings and each strap individually tightened in order to properly support and immobilize the limb.
With respect to the knee, knee braces are widely used to treat a variety of knee infirmities. Such braces may be configured to impart forces or leverage on the limbs surrounding the knee joint in order to relieve compressive forces within a portion of the knee joint, or to reduce the load on that portion of the knee. Moreover, in the event that knee ligaments are weak and infirm, a knee brace may stabilize, protect, support, unload, and/or rehabilitate the knee.
The knee is acknowledged as one of the weakest joints in the body, and serves as the articulating joint between the thigh and calf muscle groups. The knee is held together primarily by small but powerful ligaments. Knee instability arising out of cartilage damage, ligament strain and other causes is relatively commonplace since the knee joint is subjected to significant loads during the course of almost any kind of physical activity requiring the use of the legs.
A healthy knee has an even distribution of pressure in both the medial and lateral compartments of the knee. It is normal for a person with a healthy knee to place a varus moment on the knee when standing so that the pressure between the medial and lateral compartments is uneven but still natural.
One type of knee infirmity that many individuals are prone to having is compartmental osteoarthritis. Compartmental osteoarthritis may arise when there is a persistent uneven distribution of pressure in one of the medial and lateral compartments of the knee. Compartmental osteoarthritis can be caused by injury, obesity, misalignment of the knee, or simply due to aging of the knee.
A major problem resulting from osteoarthritis of the knee is that the smooth cartilage lining the inside of the knee wears away. This leads to a narrowing of the joint space with the development of cysts and erosions in the bone ends. Because of the narrowing of the joint, bone comes directly in contact with bone, and an uneven distribution of pressure develops across the knee which may result in the formation of bone spurs around the joint. All of these changes ultimately lead to increasing pain and stiffness of the joint.
While there are no cures to osteoarthritis, there are many treatments. Individuals who have a diagnosis of isolated medial compartmental osteoarthritis of the knee are confronted with a variety of treatment options such as medications, surgery, and nonsurgical interventions. Nonsurgical interventions include the use of canes, lateral shoe wedges, and knee bracing.
Knee bracing is useful to provide compartment pain relief by reducing the load on the compartment through the application of an opposing external valgus or varus moment about the knee joint. Unloading knee braces have been shown to significantly reduce osteoarthritis knee pain while improving knee function.
While known knee braces are successful at reducing pain or at stabilizing a knee joint, many users find these braces to be bulky, difficult to don and properly tighten, complicated to configure, and uncomfortable to wear. For these reasons, an embodiment described herein has streamlined features capable of providing relief for medial or lateral compartmental osteoarthritis, or functional stability of the knee that is easy to don and properly tighten, without the attendant drawbacks of known unloading knee braces.
Accordingly, exemplary embodiments of a circumferential lower leg walker, and other orthopedic devices that alleviate or eliminate the above mentioned drawbacks are described herein.